Æ22 - Antoninus Pius ΜΗΤΡΟΠ ΝΙΚΟΜΗΔΕΙΑϹ (Α shaped as Λ)

Nicomedia's proud claim to the title of metropolis — the leading city of Bithynia — was a matter of fierce civic rivalry, most bitterly contested with Nicaea throughout the imperial period. The spelling variant with Λ standing in for Α in the metropolis legend is a known die-cutting idiosyncrasy of this civic bronze series, not a correction or error in the modern sense, but a reflection of the workshop's engraver working in a provincial context where Greek letter forms were not always rigorously standardized.